Waves

Newsvine - Watching 'Jersey Shore' might make you dumber, study suggests

Take note, fans of mindless reality shows like "Jersey Shore": New research suggests watching something dumb might make you dumber. In other words, you are what you watch.

It's called media priming -- the idea that the things we watch or listen to or read influence our emotions and our behavior, perhaps more than we realize. This particular study may be the first to use fictional characters in a narrative to show an effect on people's cognitive performance, says lead author Markus Appel, a psychologist at Austria's University of Linz.

In an experiment, volunteers were told to read a fake screenplay about a character they refer to as a "foolish soccer hooligan." (A subsequent finding of the study: Austrians are adorable.) The story describes a day in the life of a man named Meier: He wakes up, reads (and misunderstands) the message in an inspiration-of-the-day calendar, meets his friends in a bar and gets very drunk. Meier then goes to a soccer game, gets into a fight and comes home to crash; he sleeps through the next day. (Substitute the soccer game for a nightclub, and you have something very similar to the televised daily shenanigans of Snooki or The Situation.)

Some of the 81 volunteers were instructed to read a longer version of the "soccer hooligan" story, while others read a shorter version -- and the control group read a rather boring story in which Meier does nothing stupid. Then researchers gave the volunteers a multiple choice general knowledge test, including questions like, "What is the capital of Libya?" and "What kind of speed is expressed by the letter 'c' in physics?" and "Who painted La Guernica?"

To be fair, these are tough questions to answer sans-Internet regardless of whether you've just watched something vapid like "Toddlers and Tiaras." But, as the researchers write, "participants who read a narrative about a stupidly acting soccer hooligan performed worse in the knowledge test than participants who read a narrative about a character with no reference to his intellectual abilities.

"The present study is, to our knowledge, the first to show media priming effects of story characters on cognitive performance," they explain in the report, which was published online this month in the journal Media Psychology.

Think you're too smart to be influenced by the media you consume? That's cute. Anything we see -- a person on the street, an ad on TV, a character in a movie -- has some influence on our next thoughts, emotions or actions, simply because it's top of mind, says Joanne Cantor, a psychologist and member of the American Psychological Association who has studied the emotional and behavioral effect of TV and movies.

“What you’ve been thinking about recently or seeing recently (is) at a higher level in your consciousness, so your brain is kind of predisposed in that direction,” says Cantor, professor emerita of communication arts and outreach director center for communication research at the University of Wisonsin-Madison. “So if you’ve just seen a movie about really altruistic people and you get an opportunity to behave altruistically, you’ll probably do it, rather than if you’ve just seen a movie about selfish people." (So fans of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" aren't particularly charitable? Noted.)

Cantor explains that empathetic people are likely to be especially affected by media priming. "But also, people who expose themselves to TV more are probably going to be more affected,” she says. Something to think about next time you find yourself lured into an hours-long marathon of your favorite reality show. On the other hand, some of us could likely use more gym and laundry, if not tanning, in our lives.

Have you ever noticed a TV show, movie or book influencing your emotions or behavior -- in a positive or negative way? Leave a comment telling us about what happened.

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On this life that we call home
The years go fast and the days go so slow

Snowmayne

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We women, we gain weight because we accumulate so much wisdom and knowledge that there isn't enough space in our heads, and it spreads all over our bodies.
We are not fat, we are greatly cultivated.
Every time I see my curves in the mirror, I tell myself: "How amazing am I ?! "

The Rev

Jeez. I wonder what effect the hours-a-day consumption of YaHooka is doing to my mind...



The Rev

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Rubix

^ making you smarter

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Parallax

well, you see your brain cells are like a herd of buffalo...

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FUCK THE ROBOTS!!!
NUKE THE WHALES!!!

Qui-Bong Jinn

This dumbass put himself on his ass.

adventure

What percentage of Americans would know any of these..... 5% maybe

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Coming Full Range

adventure

Just waiting for DH to Chime in now.

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Coming Full Range

Mercury

Generally, I only watch or read materials with a specific intention of being affected.

I only watch what I really want to watch.

A show like Jersey Shore I know implicitly has nothing in it for me. I can't force myself to watch that show even as a guilty pleasure because I just don't like it.

But I suppose if I was fascinated with that lifestyle then I could watch Jersey Shore and maybe get something out of it - so to speak. There are some cues in that show that someone might find useful in real life.

I watched a few episodes of Toddlers and Tiaras for the first time last night. I can't say I really like it, but I think I learned a few things, mostly about the nature of children and motherhood, but I wasn't all that emotionally invested in the storylines.

Point is: look for something to identify with.

Meybe I am been made stoopid tho, I dunno.

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Sir-Ex

Vying for identifiable qualities in TV reality shows as something to spend your time doing outside of that spent performing your daily productions?


I'm leaning towards teh stoopid

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Smile

Ditch the cigs!!!!!!

adventure

Something has to be said for production and directorial skill/art. A good director and production team could make a show about cow pies drying in the sun interesting.
I don't get why people always need to validate their entertainment. I don't watch Jersey Shore, but I do watch some shows that are pointless, and non educational.

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Coming Full Range

Waves

theres a difference between watching something for entertainment that is non-educational and watching something for entertainment that actually has a DETRIMENTAL effect on your intellect and psyche.

its the same difference between, say, smoking a harmless drug that gets you high and expands your mind a bit versus sitting on the couch shooting heroin all day every day. the point isnt that drugs themselves are bad its that its the way you use drugs and media that can be bad.

i think the study is flawed in alot of ways but it does surprise me that actually simply being exposed to something stupid rubs off on you, quite literally.

it definitly makes me think twice about my viewing habits. i used to watch shit like jersey shore. i always told myself it was ironically and i actually didnt enjoy it i was laughing at them, but thats what everyone who watches that shit tells themselves.

i think a push needs to be made for intelligent media in this day and age, i truly do. we have a responsibility to not turn ourselves into fucking moron jersey shore robots. our future is completely up to us and if we waste our fucking brain power away on stupid reality shit that actually makes you DUMBER, that is a complete waste of human potential in my eyes.

and again i dont mean intelligent in the sense of purely educational- i simply mean something NOT detrimental to your intellect.

in itself media and entertainment and art is a REFLECTION of whats going on in the culture. if the culture itself is stupid the entertainment will reflect that. but now im kind of realizing that by watching those reflections of stupidity you might as well be engaging that same stupidity. you literally are what you watch and consume. so be aware of what it is you are consuming and how you are consuming it is my point i guess.

always sunny in philly was brought up- to me that is a good example of intelligent media. the show is creative and they put themselves into creative situations where you have to at least use your brain somewhat to figure out. its not just a bunch of soulless robots getting drunk and going out to fight some people. its not a reflection of stupidity, its an intelligent lampooning of it through these idiots in a bar trying to live their lives.

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On this life that we call home
The years go fast and the days go so slow

fenderbender

just think what it's like to actually LIVE here where these kinds of people flood in every summer...

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Imagine there's no heaven,It's easy if you try

<3

deadhead94

Those are all easy questions. If you need to look that up, I don't know how you would know how to use the internet.

Tripoli, speed of light in a vacuum, Pablo Picasso

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Lloydy

I'd have got one out of three there. I havent done any physics since school and I could not give one iota of a fuck about art.

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Keep the red flag flying high

DetectiveMosely

Weird that you don't make a distinction between stuff that you happen to know and statistically obscure knowledge. Everyones knowledge set is different. Those questions are 3 things that never come up in... I dunno, I'd guess 70% of educated peoples lives.